At first it seems unreal, dreamlike, impossible. Armed with only a flimsy stick and a few instructions ('Be relaxed and confident, stand your ground, never, ever show fear or panic'), I'm walking through the African bush with four young lions prowling alongside me. Shoulders rolling, paws the size of dinner plates, tails held low and occasionally switching back and forth, they look so menacing and magnificent, and so utterly capable of turning me into lunch.
This is the fear that cannot be allowed into my mind. It will reveal itself in my body language and the lions will recognise it instantly. They were born in captivity, bottle-fed as cubs and reared by their handlers to think of humans as the dominant members of their pride. But they are still lions, opportunistic carnivores, and they have an unerring ability to detect weakness and single out the easy target in a herd or group.
Two of the lions bound ahead, wrestling and pushing each other. Walking towards them, entranced by their play, I lose track of the dominant female as she drifts off into the tall grass and circles back around. 'Watch your back!' one of the handlers, Marvin, calls out. I turn. The lion is stalking me, head lowered, with that predatory look in her eyes that the handlers call 'naughty' or 'cheeky'.
I stand my ground and say, 'No!' while Marvin distracts her. The look goes out of her eyes and she comes past me at a slow, nonchalant amble before flopping on the ground. 'Has anyone ever been hurt doing this?' I ask. 'No, just the occasional scratch,' replies Marvin. 'You can pet her if you like.' Following his instructions, I approach from the tail end, talking to the lion in firm but soothing tones, and start rubbing her vigorously on the back and sides. You don't stroke a lion gently. Their skin is eight times thicker than ours and a light touch can be annoying, like a fly walking on human skin. When she turns to play-bite my hand, I scratch on the ground with the stick to distract her. I give her belly a good rub and she stretches out, making a contented, throaty groan.
At the moment, there are two places in Africa where you can walk with lions and it is unfortunate that both of them are in Zimbabwe, a country with the world's highest inflation rate, 80 per cent unemployment, and severe shortages of food and fuel. I had misgivings about going there, but in nearly two weeks of travelling I didn't get so much as a hostile glance and I felt glad to be supporting the beleaguered tourist industry and the Zimbabwe-based African Lion & Environmental Research Trust (Alert).
Alert is a non-profit organisation which arranges the lion walks, and is soon to open another facility across the border in Zambia, and it is championed by such distinguished supporters as explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes. But the organisation doesn't just enable people to walk with the majestic animals - it also works tirelessly for lion conservation, employing local people in the process. Since 1975, African lion populations have declined faster than any other species on the continent. Illegal hunting, loss of habitat due to human activity and disease have been the main factors. A 2004 report by the African Lion Working Group puts the surviving lion population on the continent as low as 16,500 and decreasing, with many living in isolated, inbred and essentially doomed populations.
Alert's strategy is broad, but its main aim is to breed lions in captivity and then release them into the wild. This was the original idea of its founder, a Zimbabwean called Andrew Conolly, who inherited some lions and motherless cubs when he bought the Antelope Park game preserve near Gweru in the Zimbabwe midlands, some 20 years ago. With his wife, Wendy, he started taking the cubs for walks in the bush. 'It was amazing to see their hunting instincts develop,' Andrew says. 'It wasn't something they needed to be taught by their mothers or the pride. All they needed was the opportunity. At the same time we were reading headlines about lions dying like flies all over Africa.'
